Typical hard disk drives have several rotating disks and an E-block with multiple actuator arms. The actuator arms each support one or more suspension assemblies. A suspension assembly is defined as a load beam, baseplate and flexure. The load beam has two ends. The baseplate enables one end of each load beam to swage to the actuator arm. The flexure supports an air bearing slider at the other end of the load beam. The slider has at least one read/write head. The combination of the flexure and the slider is termed a "slider-flexure assembly".
The E-block pivots the actuator arms along an arc over the disk surface to enable the read/write head to read and write data. When the disk rotates, air pressure lifts the slider to a desired flying height above the disk. The load beam directs a gram load onto the slider in a direction normal to the disk.
Slider and head positioning tolerances with respect to a disk surface have become smaller as data storage densities have increased. To achieve precise head positioning, the sliders are designed with a high degree of pitch and roll compliance. This enables the slider to float freely at the desired flying height. Pivoting the slider with the E-block complicates the slider positioning. Accordingly, it is desirable to fix the slider in axial alignment with respect to the load beam so that when the E-block pivots, the slider does not misalign with the load beam. The slider-flexure assembly functions to allow the slider to pitch and roll while maintaining axial alignment with respect to the load beam.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,452,158 to Harrison et al. shows a flexure-slider assembly, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. The Harrison et al. patent attempts to improve pitch and roll compliance while restricting translation that could misalign the slider with respect to the load beam. One drawback of the Harrison et al. design is that it includes out-of-plane bends (identified as 43 and 44). This causes the slider-flexure assembly to consume space on two planes. One plane is occupied by the flexure tongue and another plane is occupied by a flexure portion of the slider-flexure assembly.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,428,490 to Hagen et al. shows a slider-flexure assembly. However, the gimbal beams (identified as 58) overhang the lateral sides of the slider, increasing the width of the slider-flexure assembly in the region of the slider. This increased width is undesirable because the overhanging gimbal beams may prevent the slider from reaching centrally defined disk tracks that are adjacent to a spindle.